Enjoy my journey in further developing my photography!

Over Christmas and New Year I found it the perfect opportunity to photograph my family and friends in their natural environment and at Christmas ‘do’s’/events. My aim was to capture natural reactions and the natural relationships that are present within my strong/large family & friend unit.

As I have been looking at the work of Richard Billingham, Nick Waplington & Martin Parr, I wanted to try and photograph in their styles. Each of these photographers photographed with a slightly different intention, but their styles were all ‘snapshot’ type photography and they captured specific moments. My intention would purely be to capture genuine moments, no matter how good, bad or ugly they may appear – I am looking through a lens of love, understanding and appreciation for every individual character and their quirks and the way they relate with others.

I found this a really interesting exercise and I tended to notice more intimate moments between these people – that I thought I new back to front – but I found that studying them and really analysing the way people interact (through a lens) taught me a lot more about them as humans and when to press the shutter on their way of interacting. Each person has different mannerisms and ways of relating to the people they love – so each person is individual and I had to look out for each individuals ‘moments’.

The only downside to being in such an enclosed room/space and trying to photograph people without them realising, was that they did realise at times and sometimes posed. However most of the time everyone was having such a merry time and just enjoying the festivities, and because they are used to me having my camera out at family parties – they didn’t notice being photographed.